Rsync Synchronization – Syncing Directories in Both Directions

rsyncsynchronization

I happen to know about rsyn, and I use rsync to sync between my mac and a linux server as follows.

rsync -r -t -v MAC LINUX
rsync -r -t -v LINUX MAC

I expected to run the first command to sync, but I needed the second command also when a change is made in LINUX.

Am I missing something? Does rsync have an option to sync between two directories?

Best Answer

You want bi-directional sync. Take a look at unison, which does this: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

For example, on Debian/Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install unison
$ unison MAC/ LINUX/

If you have trouble with permissions (example ext4 -> FAT):

$ unison -perms 0 vlc-2.2.0/ /media/sf_vlc/vlc
Contacting server...
Looking for changes
Reconciling changes

vlc-2.2.0      vlc                
new dir  ---->            /  [f] 

Proceed with propagating updates? [] y
Propagating updates

Related Solutions

Rsync — Itemized List of Changes

from the man page of rsync:

-F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter' repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'

        --exclude=PATTERN       exclude files matching PATTERN
        --exclude-from=FILE     read exclude patterns from FILE
        --include=PATTERN       don't exclude files matching PATTERN
        --include-from=FILE     read include patterns from FILE
        --files-from=FILE       read list of source-file names from FILE

so run rsync -i first and output it to a file and use --files-from option or you can use find utility for finding the last modified file and then rsync them. see https://serverfault.com/questions/115945/synchronizing-very-large-folder-structures

Rsync different behavior when syncing folders HDD-HDD or HDD-Ext HD

rsync has got an option called --modify-window=NUM which you can use to reduce the accuracy of time-stamp comparison. Try it with --modify-window=1. The option was created for exactly this purpose.

rsync may also try to fix other metadata, like file ownership, which is lost on FAT32 and friends, so you may still have issues even when using --modify-window=1

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Rsync — Itemized List of Changes

Rsync different behavior when syncing folders HDD-HDD or HDD-Ext HD

Related Question